SPORTS WORLD SPECIALS: CYCLING

SPORTS WORLD SPECIALS: CYCLING; A Smooth-as-Ice Switch

Published: June 5, 1989

Ask Bonnie Blair if she was ever afraid of falling off the speed-cycling track and she laughs.

''When I first got on a track I thought I was going to slide right down,'' said the 25-year-old skater-turned-cyclist. ''But now when I'm going fast, I wish I had a steeper bank because I want something to turn on.''

Blair, who won a gold and bronze medal in speed skating at the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary, Alberta, made her debut as a competitive cyclist in the Sundance Juice Sparkler Grand Prix in Northbrook, Ill., this weekend.

In the quarterfinals on Friday, Blair held off a teammate, Barbara Bradley, crossing the finish line with a half-wheel distance lead. On Saturday, however, Blair lost three match-sprints in the quarterfinals - two of which were friendly battles against her racing coach, and former Olympic speed-skating teammate, Connie Paraskevin-Young. Blair's teacher gave her the lead in the first lap of each race and then jumped past her in the last 80 meters despite Blair's aggressive manuevers.

Paraskevin-Young won a gold and silver medal in speed skating in Calgary, and was a bronze medalist in cycling in the Seoul Games last fall.

Blair, who grew up in Champaign, Ill., in a family in which four of the five children set national speed-skating records, set the world record in the 1988 Olympic 500-meter speed-skating event.

She has now turned to cycling for a challenge, following the well-trodden path taken by other speed skaters, including Eric Heiden, who turned to speed cycling after winning five gold medals at Lake Placid in 1980, and the 27-year-old Paraskevin-Young.

The move from ice to velodrome is a natural, given that cycling is part of a speed skater's daily training.

''World records have become so fast, you have to train more and longer, virtually year-round,'' she said. ''Cycling is the way to use the same muscle groups as speed skating in the off season.''

Training for both sports is an exercise in conservation, too.

''If you pound yourself, you're going to drive yourself into the ground,'' Blair said, ''and those holes are very hard to get out of.''

And she is making no promises for the 1992 Olympics in Albertville, France: ''I'll stick with whichever sport or both of them as long as I'm enjoying that thrill of competition.''